DIPLOMA IN PROFESSIONAL WRITING AND EDITING

Become a professional writer or editor -this course develops your learning, experience awareness and networking for a greater capacity to succeed in today's world. 

Learn the skills to write and edit

Steadily improve your capacity to write and edit, by experience and feedback from experienced professional writers

Grow your awareness of industry and opportunities; networking, and developing the sort of attitude that often makes a huge difference between successful and unsuccessful writers and editors.

Some Writers Flounder -Others are extremely Successful

Knowing why; and making the right career decisions can make all the difference to your future. Success in the publishing industry is not just a matter of being able to do the job. It is also very much dependent upon the attitude you have and the decisions you make.

This course is different to many others, because it goes well beyond just teaching you to write and edit. It is an "experiential based" learning program; designed to get you involved with writers, editors and the publishing industry as you study and build those skills to work better with the written word. The industry is changing faster than ever; and will continue to change; and for ongoing success you need to become "connected" and remain "connected", so that you see and adapt to recent changes, and ongoing changes as your career moves forward.

Modules

 

Core Modules

These modules provide foundation knowledge for the Learning Bundle 2100 hours in Professional Writing and Editing.
  Business Operations VBS006
  Creative Writing BWR103
  Editing I (Editing and Proofreading) BWR106
  Freelance Writing BWR102
  Publishing I BWR107
  Advanced Freelance Writing BWR201
  Information Security BIT203
  Internet Marketing BIT204
  Journalism Practice I BWR203
  Editing II BWR302
  Editing Practice BWR305
  Technical Writing (Advanced) BWR301
 
Stream Modules

Studied after the core modules, stream modules cover more specific or niche subjects.
  Industry Project BIP000
  Research Project I BGN102
  Workshop I BGN103
 
Elective Modules

In addition to the core modules, students study any 6 of the following 16 modules.
  Children's Writing BWR104
  Course Writing And Development BGN107
  Dramatic Writing BWR110
  HTML -Writing a Web Site VIT102
  Legal Terminology BWR108
  Office Practices VBS102
  Poetry BWR109
  Writing Fiction BWR105
  Ethics BPS217
  Graphic Design BIT205
  Publishing II BWR202
  Research Project II BGN201
  Research Project III BGN202
  Script Writing BWR204
  Workshop II BGN203
  Publishing III BWR303
 

Duration -2100 hours

EDITORS NEED TO BE MASTERS OF COMMUNICATION
Editors work over written words, usually with one main purpose - "to improve the way in which those words communicate between the writer and the reader"

Words are complicated things though. They can have different meanings according to both the ways in which they are combined, and the context in which they are placed.

When you start this course, you may well be aware of the difference between a noun and a verb; or pronoun and adverb; but as you study words and their use in greater depth, you will begin to see not all nouns are the same; and neither are verbs, adverbs or pronouns.



Consider Nouns

Nouns can be split mainly into common and proper nouns.

A common noun describes people, things and places, such as hat, dog, cat, writer, biscuit, city, document.
Whereas a proper noun has two distinct features –
It will usually name a specific item – usually a one of a kind.
It will begin with a capital letter – no matter where it occurs in the sentence.
Examples of proper nouns then would include –

Mrs Smith

University of Birmingham

Declaration of Independence

Mary

Joseph

Queensland

Ontario

Coca Cola

France

Paris

London

Mr Jones

Archibald

James Jones

However, there are other types of nouns –

Agent Nouns are usually common nouns (but can also be proper nouns), where the noun takes the form of a subject performing an action (verb). For example – maker (from the verb to make), teacher (from the verb to teach), actor (from the verb to act).

Countable nouns are nouns that take a singular or plural form, and combine with numerals or quantifiers (such as one, two, most, several, every), for example “dog”, “friend”, “nose”, “chair”.
Example of the use of countable nouns:

A dog, two dogs, three dogs…

A friend, two friends, three friends…

There were four chairs in the room

I can see lots of noses

Uncountable Nouns Uncountable nouns differ from countable nouns in that they only have a singular form, so you cannot add –s to the word to turn it into a plural. You can also not use a/an or a quantifier in front of them. Some examples of uncountable nouns are laughter, furniture, rice and cutlery. To quantify an uncountable noun, you can add a counting word such as a unit of measurement, or a word like “piece”. This generally takes the form “a…… of…….”
Example of the use of uncountable nouns:

“I eat rice every day”, rather than “I eat a rice every day”

“put out four sets of cutlery”, rather than “put out four cutleries”

“I would like to buy some pieces of furniture”, rather than “I would like to buy some furnitures”.

“there is a lot of laughter” rather than “there is a lot of laughters”

Collective nouns are used to refer to groups, such as 

flight of pigeons

school of fish

litter of puppies

culture of bacteria

herd of sheep

Concrete nouns are nouns used to refer to physical entities that are tangible and can be perceived by our senses. Such as

Jane

apple

Janet

fish

chair

Abstract Nouns refer to ideas and concepts such as – love, hatred, jealousy, justice, peace.
Occasionally they can be both – I stuck my daughter’s art on the fridge. Art is an abstract now, but the production of that “art” can be a concrete noun.

Traditional Editing Work may be Decreasing (eg. in print media); but ...

NEW OPPORTUNITIES are emerging (in electronic media, marketing and digital broadcasting).

There is in fact more work for good writers and editors than ever before; but not in a traditional position with a big company as it may have been in the past. The nature of this industry has changed. The way in which the work is done has changed too; and will most likely continue changing.  Writers and editors need to have a new mindset, recognising that this is now an industry for self employment, as freelancers, sub contractors or self publishers.

We Have the Experience to Help You with this

The team at ACS have decades of experience with writing and editing. Our principal has written or contributed to over 150 published books or ebooks. He has been editor for five different magazines; and apart from his role with ACS continues as garden editor for a quarterly magazine called Home Grown (published both in print and electronically). Our staff include more than a two dozen professional writers of books and magazines, many who continue to work in the industry.  
We know the publishing industry from the inside and have seen the disruption that the digital revolution and globalisation has caused; and how many well established writers have floundered, while others have adapted and forged a new and successful path for their career.

Let us help you toward a successful future in writing or editing.